So many ways
by planet p
Summary: Post of an old story! AU; mainly involving William and Edna Raines. William/Edna, Sydney/Catherine?


**So many ways** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters. I don't own _So Many Ways_ or _Dreamy Eyes_.

**Author's Notes** Written in 2007.

* * *

_Your lips are mine, as soft as dew. Your kiss is so divine. Your eyes are like the sky of blue, and stars that brightly shine. Your voice is sweet like violins, and warm like summer days. And I love you, I love you, I love you, in ohh-hhh so many, so many wayyyysss._

_Your touch is like a breath of spring. You give life to my soul. To me, sweetheart, you're everything I ever hoped to hold. A smile from you lights up my heart, and brightens all my days. And I just love you, I love you, I love you in ohh-hhh so many, so many ways._

_If words could say how much I care, my dear, you'd be amazed. But I love you, I love you, I love you in ohh-hhh so many, so many waaaaaayyyyyyyys._

-- from _So Many Ways_ by Brook Benton

* * *

**PART ONE**

Edna was stringing beans at the kitchen table, depositing the green strings into a used ice-cream tub and the beans into a large striped plastic bowl.

Beside her, her daughter, Annie, sat cross-legged on one of the red vinyl kitchen chairs, leant over the cherry tablecloth peeling potatoes.

Neither spoke whilst they worked. William was on the phone out in the hall so this gave them a convenient excuse. William wouldn't have liked them hissing at each other when he was trying to hold down a constructive conversation.

* * *

Annie brushed a hassled hand past her round face, hooking the stray hairs that had fallen in her eyes with her pinky and tucking them behind her left ear in a habitual manner.

Silently she was going crazy. She may not have been so mature, but she was not blind. She saw the way her mother and father were around one another, the stiffness, the forced politeness and sickeningly sweet conversation tones.

Their marriage had hit more than a rough patch. On some nights she even found herself praying that they didn't get divorced. She would die if that happened. They were supposed to be a happy family; perfect, respectable citizens. The reality was far from perfect.

* * *

Edna heaved a sigh leant back in her seat, gazing up at the source of the shrill buzzing that was starting to aggravate her, the neon strip in the centre of the ceiling, its artificial light casting all in an unearthly foreboding gloom.

A mosquito coiled smoked merrily on the draining board, its smoke drifting lazily through the room in waspish waves, curling up to the mustard yellow ceiling where it wheeled and writhed before petering out as it dispersed with the passage of time.

Edna felt a headache coming on. The mosquito coil turned her stomach and the neon strip was not the only buzzing appliance driving her up the wall. The fridge against the wall joined in the orchestral cacophony with its torrid tinkling, merrily, merrily, merrily…

* * *

Her fingers had started to become numb and clumsy, fumbling on the bean strings terribly. The beans seemed to develop a life of their own, and spring animatedly from her trembling hands.

Mirroring her daughter's early deportment, she swept her long hair up in one hand and stowed it away behind her left ear, an indication that she was tired and fed-up; she never used it otherwise, it made her ear stick out and she didn't care for the effect.

* * *

William was still on the phone when Annie announced that she had some maths homework to be getting on with, and left the kitchen for her room.

* * *

Her father made no comment as she passed him in the hall, and she wondered if he had noticed her at all. She made a hasty double-take at the corner and spun around briefly, catching a glimpse of her father, utterly oblivious to the fact that he was not alone in the tiny jammy hallway.

Annie rolled her eyes. That's the way it always was. When she wanted to talk to daddy he was busy. When she wanted to talk to mummy she was busy too. Everyone was busy, but what really got done? Every little thing instead seemed to get harder, dredging and dragging depression throughout the whole household.

Annie rolled her eyes again. Why was she letting her parents failing relationship get to her? What was it any of her business? She was just a child. Children didn't have opinions. Children didn't think; children followed. She shook her head, frustrated once more.

It wasn't like they couldn't see it. They both knew very well their situation, and they didn't seem to care. This was what angered Annie the most.

Did they not care enough at least to want to protect their baby girl from such a messed-up, discordant thing as a divorce. Perhaps they wanted a divorce, she thought, then they could send each other hate-mail and spread nasty rumours all over town. She snorted, mentally reprimanding herself for such thoughts.

They had better not. Annie didn't know if she could stand such a thing. People would whisper and laugh behind her back, say how her mum was a hussy and her dad a jerk, apparently. She had seen it before. It didn't bare thinking of the jokes and pranks assigned to her for her part in the dissolution of her parent's relationship. No doubt, it would all be her fault.

* * *

She reached her room and plonked herself down on her doona, ignoring her maths altogether and instead pulling out one of the girly magazines she had nicked from the store Wednesday arvo when she had wagged. She remembered thinking that she had no real reason to go, not when she hadn't done her homework, not to get yelled at some more, not to have more kids sniggering behind their hands because they knew she didn't get a word of what the teacher was on about, same as all the other students.

The glossy brightly-coloured magazine seemed only to dance in front of her eyes, none of sinking in, but Annie never gave a stuff. It was something that wasn't anything. It didn't matter. She turned to the front to find the horoscopes and tried to ignore the psychoanalysis of her parents' relationship forming in her mind. It really was _none of her business_.

* * *

Edna almost felt like crying, but that would be utterly useless. William would only accuse her of using pathetic sympathy tactics and her daughter would think her weak, not the least that her ridiculous mascara would run all down her cheeks; giving her the appearance of some horrific creature from those horror movies Annie always whinged about letting her go and see them in the cinema. She never did let Annie. Such a thing was completely ridiculous, the notion alone.

Horror movies? Edna shook her head. Did people not have enough horror in their lives, enough pressure? And if they felt needy and lacking in horror, there was always the war, several wars in fact. Not to mention the poor and starving all over in the third world countries and out back of the local skate park living in busted up cars or whatever it was they lived (and died) in.

Edna didn't really want to think about it. She wanted to be selfish and ignorant and primitive. She wanted not to care about anything in fact. How grand it would have been had she just been born without emotion at all. In that case she could have spent her life cold and heartless and always searching for something that may assist her to feel but never quite close enough, snatching at castles built of air and fantasy.

The perfect life she had always envisioned was nothing but one great ugly lie after another after all.

She was not happily married. She did not have half-a-dozen kids who all loved her dearly (as well as their country).

She did have a husband who went to work so that she could have a pretty house and the latest kitchen gadgets to gossip to the envious neighbours about (or when they were listening in when she was talking altogether too loudly to her "gadgets" which she had given names. Sometimes she thought that William would prefer not to come home at all. She sure wished he would stay in his bleeding sanatorium on the hill some days; become a permanent resident.

Her daughter was pretty enough, as for liked, she had no idea, along with her schooling.

Edna heaved a second sigh and realised how out-of-touch she really was. Things were just not working for her at the moment.

* * *

William had apparently finished on the phone as he was now listening to one of his Vera Lynn records that drove her absolutely nuts. It wasn't that she didn't like the music or the singing. It was more the fact that her husband seemed to care more for his "damned" records more than he did his own family.

* * *

Dinner was served by six-thirty. Edna made a note that dinner was traditionally served at six and not six-thirty, and slacking on her part was not good enough, it only made matters worse. She could not afford to let things slip.

* * *

"Annie, honey, would you terribly mind helping your mother with the drying up?" Edna questioned her daughter.

Annie rolled her eyes fleetingly, her back to the table. "Oh, fine!" she huffed, snatching the tea towel from her mother and stomping up to the draining board where she began drying the dishes in a stuffy silence whilst her mother finished up the cutlery in the sink.

* * *

**PART TWO**

William stared hollowly up at the ceiling, replaying the day's events in his head, for lack of anything else to do.

Edna was in the bathroom probably puking her guts up, seemingly unable to keep anything down for more than half-an-hour.

William sighed and turned to face the window, shutting his eyes and feigning sleep before Edna reemerged expecting him to care that she was sick or whatever it was that she was; something wrong in her head he suspected, same old story; she'd blame it on him anyway. Women always did. Blame it on the husband.

* * *

Edna carefully made her way across to the bed as though to avoid waking her husband, although she knew he wasn't really sleeping, and he knew damn well that she knew.

As per her luck, she managed once again to find the creakiest floorboard and step on it too.

She noted her husband wince but made no comment, glad he hadn't yelled at her for it yet.

* * *

William turned over and opened his eyes. Edna was apparently asleep. He watched her for a moment before turning away once more.

Perhaps she was into self-hate these days? _My husband doesn't want me, I must be ugly or fat or both. Both, it's always both. Ugly. Fat. Ugly. Fat_. God, it gave him a headache just fathoming it. _Bleeding women!_

* * *

Moonbeams fall idly through the lace curtains and flounced about on the silly floral carpet. _Stupid carpet!_

William shook his head, sitting up now. _God, she doesn't seriously think she's fat does she?_ He had no answer. Instead he turned to regard his wife as though attempting to think through the reason for their recent distance. He came up blank. It didn't seem to be any one defining event, it had just happened one day. All those tiny little gnawings exacerbating themselves over time until they became a horrible aching in one's head and they just couldn't stand being near one another let alone anything else. The sound of her voice alone churned his stomach.

He closed his eyes for a moment, just listening as his wife breathed rhythmically, trying to imagine her as the woman he had fallen in love with all those years ago. But had he really? Or had he simply lied himself into believing? Had he simply taken the easy way out?

No, his eyes flicked open once more, she was not ugly or fat, but neither was she… He frowned. What was the word? They just no longer seemed to mesh or click or whatever it was that Green was always preaching.

_Damn Green!_

* * *

He let his mind wander unattended, endless garbling having to do with Green and his cohorts, anything that was not related to the issue at hand. He didn't want to think about Edna right now. He had better things to be thinking about! That's what he always told himself. Better and brighter things. Damn, Edna was a lost cause already, and he really couldn't be bothered. There was a time and a place for all things, and he and Edna had simply come to an end. Yes, it no longer mattered. Not in the grand scheme of things.

He let it go, pushed it to the back of his mind, turning from his wife's sleeping form once more. He decided to sleep on the couch. He was never going to get to sleep now. His head was too full. He didn't really feel like waking Edna and having her grumble the rest of the night and then blame him for her tiredness in the morning.

* * *

Edna rolled over uncomfortably. To her surprise, she was greeted with emptiness. She opened her eyes sleepily and blinked wetly, her eyelashes sticking together annoyingly. William was no longer there. She wondered if he had just gotten up. Resting her head on the mattress, she shivered. It was cold. Apparently he had been up for a while now if that was the case.

The electronic clock on the bedside cabinet read 4.34am. Edna took a heaving breath and pushed herself into a sitting position, slipping her legs off the edge of the mattress and standing.

She bet odds that he was smoking again.

So had it finally come to that? That he could no longer force himself to sleep in the same bed as her? She almost felt regret, and then she heard the faint mumbling of the telly and knew he was smoking indoors again. Cursing under her breath, she hurriedly straightened her hair with her fingers like a comb, and swept off down the hall.

* * *

William gazed with empty eyes at the images and noise that blared from the television, casting the room in an odd kaleidoscope of never-ending colours and patterns.

A creak to his left made him turn. Edna stood rested against the doorframe, her head on the wood, arms across her chest defensively. Then again, it could have been the cold. It could have been both.

He looked back to the telly, dismissing his despondent wife.

"Well, ain't you gonna invite me in or somefink?" she asked in a bored voice, pretending to care.

William rolled his eyes. "No. Go away. Leave me alone."

Edna scoffed.

William turned and saw she was poised to follow his instruction. He rolled his eyes once more.

Edna stopped and turned back to him. "Finally got jack of me then?"

William didn't bother to correct her. Let her think what she wanted. She would only twist it in her head anyhow. "Yeah, something like that." He didn't bother to care. He didn't.

Edna scowled. "Figures!"

She swept off. He almost called out "sweet dreams", but then he knew they wouldn't be. He caught himself just in time, and covered up with a sigh, lighting himself a new cigarette as his last one had been finished half-an-hour or so ago.

* * *

Edna was finishing up the washing then she would ring the Parkers and see if Catherine was in.

Annie was sleeping in as she had always done weekends. Edna didn't know where William was. They hadn't spoken since last night, and she really couldn't care less either. _Wasting the money on ciggies as usual!_

* * *

Catherine was her usual cheery self. Edna knew she'd never tell her. The poor girl was still so young, so innocent. The two women were more-or-less the same age. The difference was, Catherine still believed in love and goodness. Edna knew they were just fairy-stories. Besides, William would get on his rocker if she said anything of the sort. Appearances had to be kept, at all costs. Same as always; nothing new, Edna thought.

* * *

**PART THREE**

Edna let herself fall heavily onto the couch, gazing at the glossy-covered magazine now clutched in her hands. She couldn't believe it. Her husband preferred looking at other women to his own wife. She flicked through the magazine and found that several pages were missing. After some careful investigation, she later found them hung up in the attic where her husband kept his things from work and what-not.

Lola smiled back at her brightly, an encouraging little wink about her left eye. She was pretty in her little blue air-stewardess uniform, her dark hair falling in wavy tresses down her back, her smoky eyes inviting and playful.

Edna almost cried. She wasn't good enough for her husband then?

* * *

William leant on the wall casually, chatting to one of the pretty Centre office girls. She was either from accounting or administration, he wasn't sure which.

* * *

Edna paid the taxi and got out of the front, watching as the taxi disappeared slowly into obscurity. Then she turned to the white castle before her and crossed herself. She would be going in there.

* * *

"Excuse me?"

Jarod widened his eyes, lifting his chin in the direction of the door, a significant frown etched across his tiny face.

Sydney turned to regard the woman who had addressed him. "Edna?"

Edna rolled her eyes. "Ssss… Sydney?"

Sydney nodded. "I'm Sydney, yes."

Edna sniffed, brushing the hair from her eyes and tucking it behind her left ear in one swift movement. "Have you seen W- my husband?"

Sydney thought on it a moment. "Seen, yes. Know where he is at this moment, no. I could give admin a call if it's very urgent."

Edna shook her head. "I, um, wanted to talk, that's all. I guess it'll just have to wait…" she trailed off.

"You are sure, Edna?"

"Perfectly sure."

"You don't sound p-"

The sound of girlish laughter cut him off as he realised who that must be. Dr. Raines's secretary.

Edna spun around at the sound of her husband's voice.

* * *

William smiled across at his secretary. She, at least, didn't have a boyfriend. He nodded, trying to recall the name she'd given. _Texas? No, not that. Indianna? No, again. Dallas_! He grinned. Dallas, that was it!

* * *

Jarod stood by the door with his mentor, unsure of the purposeful stride with which Edna was now making toward her husband.

Dr. Raines looked up at the sounds of her chunky-heeled boots on the marble floor in time to see her walk right up to the secretary and place her hands on her chest and push her flat backwards.

Dallas screamed and stumbled back, falling to the floor with a satisfied thump.

Edna now rounded on her husband, who had, by this time, taken a fair few good steps backwards. Edna wasn't to be perturbed, however.

The little boy frowned, gazing up at his mentor who looked plain frightened for his co-worker.

Edna wore a heavy trench coat that fell just above her knees, her boots reaching just below her knees. In a moment her coat lay disregarded behind her and she chucked herself on her husband, smacking his head into the wall in the process.

It was at that point that Sydney realised the woman's intentions and keeping in mind their young audience, turned to escort the young pretender back inside to finish their session. But Jarod just stared wide-eyed at the little stewardess's uniform Edna wore, the skirt short to the point of not being a skirt at all.

Sydney seized Jarod's hand and was just about to drag him off inside when he was once again interrupted by the sound of laughter, ecstatic laughter he knew by heart.

* * *

Catherine appeared at the corner, tears in her eyes from trying not to laugh. Poor William was probably having a heart attack.

"Cathy?"

She looked up at the sound of her name in a voice half-pleading. She didn't need anymore explanations.

* * *

"Jarod! Long time no see." Catherine picked the little boy up under the arms and spun him around, placing him carefully upon the floor inside Sydney's office. "Miss me?"

Jarod smiled. "No."

Catherine pouted, her eyes tragic. "No-oo?" She placed a strategic falter at the end for good measure.

Jarod nodded in confirmation. "No. I knowed you was gonna come. You pwomised."

Catherine knelt down before the boy and tickled him. "That's right. I did. And Cathy always keeps her promise. On second thoughts, don't quote me on that."

Jarod smirked, shaking his head. "No, Mrs. Chairman."

The brunette giggled. "Little boy, are you teasing me?" She lunged forward to tickle him but he was ready this time. He ran around the desk and hid behind his mentor, daring her to come any closer.

Catherine clicked her tongue, shaking her head, her eyes narrowed slightly. "You devious, little rabbit."

Jarod giggled and moved around to the other side of Sydney.

Catherine grinned, gazing up at Sydney a moment as she slowly slinked across the room, edging closer to the boy. Her grin widened with her eyes.

Sydney didn't like that look she was giving him. She was planning something, he could tell.

"_Dreamy eyes, you've got such dreamy eyes. When I'm away from you, I 'm so alone and blue. When I take you home, I feel so all alone, and then I realise – I love you, dreamy eyes!_"

Catherine continued humming wistfully as she edged further around her friend. Sydney shot her a half-disturbed, half-panicked not understanding glance. He turned to face her as she edged further around him, intent on grabbing the boy and making him pay for his daring.

"Sydney!"

Sydney shook his head, subconsciously protecting his charge.

"No fair! No cheating! You moved," the young woman whined.

"So did you."

Catherine rolled her baby blues. "This is between the neon rabbit and me, head doctors excluded."

Sydney shot her a reprimanding frown, frowning grimly. "Who made you in charge of the rules?"

Catherine laughed hysterically. "I did, chup-a-chups."

"You?"

"That is correct, Dr. Green. I, Catherine Parker, started this game, and therefore the rules are mine to do with as I will."

Sydney placed his hands on his hips, still keeping pace with her as she paced. "What if I offered a challenge of leadership?"

"I'd say you're either crazy or just very _very _stupid."

Sydney smiled. "And if I simply took it upon myself to interfere as I saw fit?"

"Then I'd say someone's barking up the wrong tree, honey bunches."

"And what if I am?" Sydney stopped and stared back into her eyes.

Catherine leant forward slowly. "Then you're sure to find someone… up that tree doesn't approve and barks back!"

Jarod gave a babyish squeal as Catherine seized him about the middle and pulled him into her arms, dancing away across the room, carefree.

"You see, I win… dreamy eyes…" she teased.

Sydney rolled his eyes. "For now."

Catherine opened her mouth, impressed. "Oooo, 's at a dare by any chance, head doctor?"

"I don't know, I'd have to consult the manufacturers on that one. If you'll be so kind as to just give me a moment and I'll get back to you on that, ma'am."

Catherine smiled gently, twirling about so she was facing Sydney. "I would be so kind, your good sir."

* * *

A sudden giggle jolted Catherine from her little game. She walked to the door and peeked outside, gasping and looking back to little Jarod rested comfortably on her hip, a significant little gleam in her eye.

She shook her head, tisking. "Naughty, naughty, naughty."

Jarod bit his lip to keep from laughing and nodded solemnly before both burst into fresh laughter.

Catherine strode to the desk and placed the little boy down by the paper weight, straightening his fringe as a mother might.

"There we go, all better." She turned to Sydney, Chairman's wife again. "I'd best get those two a room or something."

Sydney bit his lip, smiling, and nodded to his shoes, his eyes never leaving the younger woman's.

"Sydneys?"

Catherine straightened her clothes with her hands and strode off, soon disappearing into the hall and shutting the door with a little snap. Sydney turned to his protégé with a tiny smile, the little boy kicking his legs slightly, uncertain of the height and the funny feeling in his stomach he thought he might like although it scared him a little too. "Yes, Jarod?"


End file.
